


Ghosts in the Night

by novaband



Series: The Kelly Vignettes [1]
Category: Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: & the Refuge is an awful place., F/M, Flashbacks, Jack has insomnia, Katherine tries her best, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, References to physical abuse, but it's there just in case, not inherently graphic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-25
Updated: 2018-08-25
Packaged: 2019-07-02 07:36:19
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 911
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15791979
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/novaband/pseuds/novaband
Summary: Jack can't sleep through the night. Katherine worries.





	Ghosts in the Night

**Author's Note:**

> I mostly drew inspiration off of Corey Cott's interpretation of Jack for this one, but it should fit for any interpretation you lean towards. It mostly plays off of the personal headcanon that Jack would frequently take the punishment for the other kids in the Refuge so that they wouldn't get hurt . . . and that Snyder was particularly brutal.

        If Katherine had to pinpoint the one thing that she despised most in the world as of a year ago, she would've answered with something utterly trivial, like sour blueberries or the slush on the roads in winter.

        In a year, she had learned that there were much worse things to hate. Fire, lodging house conditions . . . but the worst, by far, was watching Jack's dark eyes widen with terror as he fought battles entirely invisible to her.

        Jack liked to put his guard up around people. He refused to show sensitivity around those he didn't trust and put up a strong front of courage instead. He built walls higher than the rooftops of Manhattan and larger than his dreams of Santa Fe. They were painted with bright colors; a warning to predator to keep away. They'd lasted him a long time, earning a few chips along the way.

        Snyder had taken a hammer to what kept Jack safe and hid the tools to replace it with him.

        Katherine noticed the little things first. He'd flinch away from her arms around his waist until he realized it was her and stop still in his tracks if they passed by the brick building that stood as a haunting reminder of the Refuge. He'd stay up for longer than he should in fear of what would happen when he closed his eyes and his lip would tremble if her father raised his voice a little too much. She thought of them as passing shadows of his past; terrible reminders that would pass in time. Jack bounced back fine enough, laughing it off and continuing about his day as though nothing had happened. Neither of them liked when the other worried over them, so she didn't ask. She trusted him to tell her if something was wrong.

        Her trust, evidently, was misplaced.

        She'd been afraid before, and downright petrified, but she wasn't certain there was a word to describe how she felt when she found the eighteen-year-old union leader curled up on the floor of her apartment, tears streaking down his face.

        "It wasn't 'im, it was me," Jack repeated in a fit of desperation. "Let 'im go, let 'im go —"

        Katherine kneeled down beside him, a few inches away. His eyes flickered to where she'd moved, but no light of recognition came over him. His words became incoherent and slurred after a while, orange and yellow paint beginning to dry on his hands. She reached out for him, but that only served to make him double back and stare at her with the eyes of a wounded doe.

        It wasn't going to be an easy fight.

        "Jack, sweetheart, it's alright," She had to clench her hands as she spoke to keep them from shaking, "it's just me, it's just your Katherine."

        He was hesitant to believe her, folding in on himself as though becoming a ball would protect him from the harm he expected. Jack could feel the brass knuckles against his skin, ghosting pains that made him flinch and cry out for an end to it all.

        A delicate hand slowly reached out towards him, splotched with pen ink and pale beneath the moonlight. It wasn't the Spider's hand, no, it  _couldn't_ be. It was pale and small with thin fingers made for typing, while his hand been thick and hardened and trained for throwing punches and cracking whips. That wasn't a hand that would leave purple and blue splotches against his skin or give him red, angry welts across his back. He reached out with his own, paint-stained fingers, his eyes beginning to soften when he felt the hand clasp around his.

        "Kath'rine?"

        Jack's voice was hoarse enough to make her shudder, but she nodded her head and let him rush into her arms and hide his face against her shoulder. She cooed softly, reassuring him that he would never have to be inside of those walls again. The lecture about him needing to get more sleep would come later, not now.

        It was _now_ that she was reminded of how young he really was. With the trials he had experienced, Katherine's mind altered and twisted his age in her head to make it seem impossible that the figure in front of her was barely eighteen. In her small apartment with the curtains pulled open to let in the past-midnight glow of New York's grey moon, she was forced to realize that he was still a child. A child who was terrified and lost and using her as a lighthouse to guide him home.

        She couldn't take the Refuge from him. Desperately, she wished she could. She wanted to take the memories away from him and see his smile constantly, but deep down, she knew it wasn't possible. Jack would always be haunted with dreams of spiders and hurt, no matter how many times she pulled him up for air.

        For a little while, Katherine decided, she could pretend she could take all of his worries away. She could leave kisses on the top of his head and get him to trust her enough to pull him onto the bed. She could watch Jack's breath slowly even out again and let him nuzzle into the crook of her neck. She could lull him into a dreamless sleep as the sun began to peek over the horizon.

        Katherine Pulitzer could give him a short-term bandage for a long-term wound, and so she did.

**Author's Note:**

> Katherine's hatred of fire is in brief reference to the Pulitzer mansion fire of January 1900. I haven't found a proper account of the actual House of Refuge practices during the 1890s/early 1900s, so this is purely based on Jack's reactions to Snyder alone.


End file.
